Re: another 3 layer gum attempt
Paul, I've lost track of what you're using for yellow pigment. I know at one point you said you had PY 153; is that what you're using? Those dark yellows can tend to brown if overexposed and/or heavily pigmented. Not saying for sure that's what's going on here but just a guess. You want your yellow printing to be yellow; darker and lighter yellow, but even the darkest parts should be definitely yellow not brown. I sometimes print yellow darker for other purposes, but never for tricolor. As far as tonality, I think the negative looks good, especially for sun exposure (I use much thinner negatives for my prints, but I tried using one of them in the sun once and it didn't work at all, way too thin) but I think the density of the print overall is too much for yellow. For example, in the background (sky?) you've got solid yellow where there should be very little tone at all if you're wanting to reproduce the colors of the original fairly faithfully. A blue on top of the yellow you've got there is going to give you green instead of blue. And the area of the leaves that gives a nice splash of yellow in the original is brown, and that's not going to be salvaged by the other colors; that needs to be a nice sunny yellow in the yellow printing that's pretty much left blank on the other printings. I'd say perhaps a little less pigment but mainly less exposure probably more development as well. I think maybe you're not there as far as developing out the tones; it seems muddy around the eyes, for example, and more development might get rid of some of the unwanted tone where there shouldn't be any yellow, but it's not going to turn the browns into a nice sunny yellow; that's an issue for pigmentation and exposure. Those are my initial thoughts, but I may have more as I think about it more. BTW, the reference about the Everclear is to advice from some gum printers in the past to use a few drops in the coating mix to make the coating go smoother. Gin and tonic sounds good to me for a hot day, Katharine On Jul 21, 2009, at 6:23 PM, Paul Viapiano wrote: Ha!! I needed to laugh...believe me...
|